posted at 5:21 pm on June 2, 2014 by Allahpundit

The more damning the accusations against Bergdahl, the less the prisoner swap adds up.

A senior official confirms to Fox News that the conduct of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — both in his final stretch of active duty in Afghanistan and then, too, during his time when he lived among the Taliban — has been thoroughly investigated by the U.S. intelligence community and is the subject of “a major classified file.”

In conveying as much, the Defense Department source confirmed to Fox News that many within the intelligence community harbor serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy…

Sources told Fox News that many officials in the Executive Branch are “quite baffled” by the White House’s decision to allow the president to stand alongside Bergdahl’s father this past weekend, given the father’s history of controversial statements, emails and online posts.

There’s a Pentagon file that may or may not accuse this guy of outright treason and not only does Obama still do the deal for five Taliban bigwigs, he holds a big White House presser with Bergdahl’s father? What?

Rosen’s not the only reporter hearing whispers about collaboration either. Stephen Hayes of the Standard spoke to several soldiers from Bergdahl’s squad (one of whom tweeted at length about his suspicions this weekend) and heard lots of doubts — and not just about desertion.

[S]everal military officials who spoke with THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted privately that Taliban attacks on U.S. forces in the Paktika province seemed to increase in frequency and effectiveness [after Bergdahl disappeared]…

[O]thers wonder whether Bergdahl helped the Taliban, either willfully or under duress. In the hours after he disappeared, according to sources familiar with the intelligence, U.S. troops received an intelligence report that Bergdahl stopped in a local village and asked how to find the Taliban. That report, if it exists, is not mentioned in the Wikileaks documents related to Bergdahl’s disappearance. But several sources with knowledge of the case insist that the report is true.

Says one platoon mate: “He’s friends with the delivery driver, he’s friends with the goat farmer, he’s got relationships with all the locals—and he stops to ask how he can find the Taliban? He could have just gone to Habib the local goat farmer and floated along with the locals.”

Intel officials told Hayes that the Pentagon thoroughly investigated Bergdahl’s disappearance, questioning members of his squad many times. Among the things they wanted to know was whether he had info that could have helped the Taliban, be it medical, tactical (how to deal with IEDs), or strategic. Two other sources told him that Bergdahl was, in fact, considered AWOL by the Army — but that the Pentagon ultimately backed down on formally designating him that way, probably because the politics of accusing Bergdahl while he was in enemy hands would have been simply too hot for comfort.

But if all that’s true … why was Bergdahl promoted in absentia to sergeant in 2011? Why would he be in line for another promotion, to staff sergeant, this month? And why would the White House let itself get within a thousand miles of the Bergdahl family with suspicions like these ready to bubble over? It’s one thing to do a deal to get an American back; it’s another to give away the terrorist farm as part of it; and it’s another still to give away the farm for a guy whom your own investigators think may be a Taliban sympathizer. Remember, the ostensible point of the prisoner exchange is to set a precedent so that Obama can release other detainees at Gitmo later this year and finally close the prison. The last thing you’d want to do in that case is trade five especially dangerous detainees for someone whose loyalty to the U.S. is in serious question even within the administration’s own ranks. It’s a political tornado in the making; if Bergdahl does end up being proved a deserter or worse, Democrats will run screaming from future Gitmo prisoner releases. Just doesn’t make sense. Maybe the White House has reason to believe that Bergdahl’s getting a bum rap and really was taken against his will — but in that case, why isn’t Carney or anyone else pushing back hard with that information? What’s going on here?

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I remember very clearly some initial reports of evidence that Bergdahl had deserted.

Then those reports dried up and how he wound up in Taliban custody was lost in the overarching narrative that he was a “prisoner”.

novaculus on June 2, 2014 at 5:58 PM

Yeah, just like the Benghazi attack. Initial pictures of “Chris” being rushed through the hospital by distraught Libyans. Even though those pictures clearly showed a corpse, that didn’t fit the narrative. When was the last time that anybody has seen those pictures?

He could have sympathized with the Afghans and/or gone native, which would explain why he wasn’t beheaded immediately or tortured. However, he could also have posed as a sympathizer and is now providing valuable intel to the Western forces. I wonder why no one on either the right or left has considered that possibility.

RobertE on June 2, 2014 at 5:29 PM

Heha.
I’m sure the left is salivating hopefully over your secret squirrel scenario.

He could have sympathized with the Afghans and/or gone native, which would explain why he wasn’t beheaded immediately or tortured. However, he could also have posed as a sympathizer and is now providing valuable intel to the Western forces. I wonder why no one on either the right or left has considered that possibility.

RobertE on June 2, 2014 at 5:29 PM

Um…… going undercover as a sympathizer would only make sense if there were some method to relay information back to the US forces. If anything the exact opposite was going on where search teams were baited into dangerous situations and ambushes as if the enemy had some way of knowing US tactics. Coincidence?

The only thing I would hope at this point is that Bergdahl’s filthy disgusting parents and supporters of the defector keep his homecoming very low key.

playbook: how the salty/spicy new West Wing phrase for the Obama Doctrine wound up in the @NYTimes 3 times in 4 days http://goo.gl/uUS2tm
==========

By MIKE ALLEN | 06/01/14 1:08 PM EDT

Welcome to June. BEHIND THE CURTAIN: For those pining for an Obama Doctrine victory for the president,

here it is: “Don’t Do Stupid Shit.”

Playbook rarely prints a four-letter word — our nephews are loyal readers. But we are, in this case, because that is the precise phrase President Obama and his aides are using in their off-the-record chats with journalists.

If the aim was to get this phrase in circulation to define the Obama doctrine, mission accomplished!

It appeared in the L.A. Times at the end of Obama’s Asia trip this spring, was reprised in the lead story of Thursday’s New York Times, and is used TWICE in today’s NYT — once in the news columns, and once in a column by Tom Friedman, who was part of an off-the-record roundtable with Obama on Tuesday:

many officials in the Executive Branch are “quite baffled” by the White House’s decision to allow the president to stand alongside Bergdahl’s father this past weekend, given the father’s history of controversial statements, emails and online posts.

ROFLMAO!

Barky loved it. It took him back to his days of palling around with terrorist scumbags like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn. I’m surprised Barky didn’t go to Gitmo and party with the Taliban terrorists he was setting free. High fives all around!!

Still trying to figure out what President Barack Obama’s foreign policy doctrine is? Search no more. The White House has got you covered.

“For those pining for an Obama Doctrine victory for the president, here it is: ‘Don’t Do Stupid Shit,’” Politico’s Mike Allen wrote in his daily tip sheet,

the Politico Playbook, Saturday. “Playbook rarely prints a four-letter word — our nephews are loyal readers. But we are, in this case, because that is the precise phrase President Obama and his aides are using in their off-the-record chats with journalists.”

Allen went on to point out all the places the phrase has popped up in recent days and weeks.

“If the aim was to get this phrase in circulation to define the Obama doctrine, mission accomplished!” he wrote. “It appeared in the L.A. Times at the end of Obama’s Asia trip this spring, was reprised in the lead story of Thursday’s New York Times, and is used TWICE in today’s NYT — once in the news columns, and once in a column by Tom Friedman, who was part of an off-the-record roundtable with Obama on Tuesday.”

“WHAT’S CLEAR is that the White House is pushing this line hard, and effectively,” he concluded. “What’s not clear is how a high school cliché will help successfully define a foreign policy that many on the right and left find soft and uninspired.”

For the smartest president in the history of humanity, this is hardly a sophisticated, much less ambitious, doctrine. As for whether President Obama has lived up to his own doctrine, well, that’s another question altogether.

Obama is just messing with us. He can’t stand America, and never could. This “exchange” is just his way of rewarding a disloyal American, while a marine is stuck in a prison cell in Mexico. He doesn’t CARE how any of this makes him look. Anyone with connections like Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeremiah Wright, doesn’t care in the least about the United States of America. He’s not facing reelection, and he doesn’t think much about his own party, anyway. He’s pulling a Clinton. He’s doing it because he CAN. All anyone needs to do, is look at our president’s radical past, in order to understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s not a liberal. At heart, he’s a radical.

Well, it is sucking up a lot of the news cycle. You can see how these half-wits thought they could spin it as a counter to the VA scandal, as The Won swoops in to “rescue” a “captive” soldier. And it’s not a surprise they underestimated the power of reality as the facts spread rapidly outside the control of their MSM tools and ultimately demanded attention.

They’re not nearly as good at manipulating the narrative without Axelrod.

Is there any truth to the reports that he “forgot” how to speak English? His own wacko Tali-dad floated this one or twice.

forest on June 2, 2014 at 6:04 PM

It’s at least a plausible suggestion. Though I think that there is great pressure to keep the filthy defector away from situations where he would have to answer the many questions about how it came to be that he spent five years among the enemy but managed to keep his head (literally). This is not a part of the world known for taking prisoners and yet this Muslim-loving Army-hating defector managed to do just that. Questions needs answers.

They’re not nearly as good at manipulating the narrative without Axelrod.

novaculus on June 2, 2014 at 6:14 PM

Meh. They sucked with Axelrod, too. Barky always told the dumbest, most ridiculous, intellectually offensive lies and tales. It’s the Vichy GOP that has Barky’s back and never does anything about any of this stuff.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was never listed by the U.S. as a POW. Here’s why: http://apne.ws/1iMBMjA
=======================

Bergdahl was never listed by US as a POW
By The Associated Press
— Jun. 2, 2014 3:56 PM EDT

In his five years of captivity, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was never listed by the Pentagon as a prisoner of war.

Nor has the U.S. applied that term to any of its Taliban prisoners — including the five senior Taliban figures who were released last weekend from detention at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom.

A look at how that process works:

— After disappearing in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009, Bergdahl was listed by the Pentagon on July 1, 2009, as “duty status whereabouts unknown.” Two days later his status was changed to “missing/captured,” and it did not change again prior to his release.

— The Pentagon defines “missing/captured” as a member of the armed forces who has been “seized as the result of action of an unfriendly military or paramilitary force in a foreign country.” Some would say that amounts to being a POW. For purposes of reporting and recording the status of service members, the Pentagon some years ago stopped using the term “prisoner of war,” although it awards a POW Medal for eligible service members and it has a Defense POW/Missing Persons Office.

— The POW issue for American troops in Afghanistan stands in contrast to past U.S. conflicts such as World War II or the Korean War because Afghanistan is not technically at war with the U.S. or any other state. The “enemy” forces in Afghanistan are mainly the Taliban, which are considered a “non-state armed group.”

— In a conventional war, prisoners held by either side are subject to rules of treatment under the third Geneva Convention of 1949. It defined POWs’ rights and established detailed rules for their protection and eventual release.
================================

If Obama didn’t save Bergdahl then you wingnuts would crucify him.
Now that Obama saved Bergdahl you wingnuts are crucifying him.

/lefty talking points

Mark Boabaca on June 2, 2014 at 6:22 PM

You don’t think that it odd that in 13 years of combat within Afghanistan that there was but one “POW” taken? Bergdahl was either a very fortunate exception to the normal way of fighting or some of these stories that are surfacing might be legitimate. I think the left is scared that they already know the answer. Five high-level terrorists are back in the fight in exchange for a soldier who defected to join them in that fight against America.

The filthy rat-eared wonder, bless his heart, acted as if he personally took the kill shot that got OBL. Why isn’t he jumping in here to take credit for getting Bowe Bergdahl out of the clutches of the enemy?

…Though I think that there is great pressure to keep the filthy defector away from situations where he would have to answer the many questions about how it came to be that he spent five years among the enemy but managed to keep his head (literally). This is not a part of the world known for taking prisoners and yet this Muslim-loving Army-hating defector managed to do just that…

Happy Nomad on June 2, 2014 at 6:15 PM

Bingo! I think you just nailed it Happy, perfect sense. The last thing the spin doctors would want is this guy answering questions (or making any statements for that matter), so he conveniently forgets how to speak English. Perfect!

And why would the White House let itself get within a thousand miles of the Bergdahl family with suspicions like these ready to bubble over?

Incompetence. Republicans need to understand this.

There is no doubt Obama is a leftist progressive who wants government in every aspect of our lives…but Stalin and Mao he is not. They were paranoid murderous dictators, but reasonably intelligent and were strong leaders.

Obama is the very personification of the American leftist. They talk alot, have thin skin, like to party, do not like to rough it, are not intellectually curious, and have no understanding of the world outside of their circle of like minded travellers.

So while Obama no doubt wants to succeed, thankfully for us, he lacks the intelligence and work ethic needed to pull off whatever he thinks leftism is. This probably explains why the more hardworking leftist are even confused by Obama’s actions.

However, despite the fact we should all be thankful that Obama is too inept to pull off his “transformation” of America, he is so incompetent that a major nuclear power could actually make a nuclear first strike work. I don’t think we have had a presidential administration this inept since the 19th century.

As to this idea that someone “forgets English” … I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so unbelievably stupid – which is no mean feat, these days.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on June 2, 2014 at 6:39 PM

Yes, one dumbazz commentator likened it to not using your arm muscles to not speaking English as the reason he “forgot”. As if speaking whatever language the filthy goat lovers speak uses a different “muscle”. the left will be hilarious to watch.

The democrats are going to get murdered by this, if Bergdahl is shown to be a traitor. So why aren’t they out there pushing back against this tsunami of information showing that the slime ball was a deserter/traitor?

I’m confused, since they lie so effortlessly about stuff==why not just make up a story?

The whole thing about distracting from the VA goes up in smoke here. Sure, the VA killing veterans is ghastly for Democrats… but arranging a celebratory release for a traitor whilst freeing multiple murderers sworn to kill Americans isn’t exactly a winning story either.

You can make a thin case for just sheer incompetence with the VA. How can you spin springing a traitor at that cost? What’s the “face saving” story here with Bergdahl? I mean, This is aiding and abetting, treason on the part of the President kind of thing.

Watch Obama smile as soon as Bergdahl [the father] gives the most famous Muslim expression, the “Bismillah” or the “Basmallah” [the most famous war cry of Islam, “bismillah al-rahman al-rahim]:

Of the islamicized father:

What no one in the media captured was Robert Bowe Bergdahl’s favorites on his Youtube account.

It reveals a dark mind, a collector of a litany of ‘terrorist favorites’, videos from training on how to become Muslim Jihadist to urging American troops to desert and even favorite speeches by confirmed terrorists like Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, condemning America as a terrorist state:

Shoebat translates what he found, and explains the significance. The intellius linking of the father to the taliban was probably because the father was in conversation with a Taliban liason, via the web, which Intellius might pick up

Some American soldiers connected to him had to sign non disclusures. You can see why

A former member of Bergdahl’s squad, who goes by “Cody,” shared that local village children in Afghanistan said that Bowe came by their area and “Wanted to meet with Taliban.”

While the Obama administration is proudly touting how it was able to free an American soldier who was captured by the Taliban, what no one picked is the fact that Obama SMILED as soon as he heard the most famous war cry of Islam, “bismillah al-rahman al-rahim,” Arabic for “in the name of Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.”

Watch Obama smile as soon as Bergdahl gives the most famous Muslim expression, the “Bismillah” or the “Basmallah”:

“The amount of pain he’s caused,” says one of Bergdahl’s platoon mates, his voice trailing off. After a long pause, he resumes. “The time he was DUSTWUN was the most miserable time of my life. It was absolute hell. A bunch of us had a pact if we found him. We’d each get him in a room for five minutes and short of killing him we could do what we want.”

“There were times—there are still times—when I turn on the TV and I wish they’d just beheaded him on TV and gotten it over with.”

This.is.devastating! And it tells me all I need to know about the deserter!!

What I find interesting is the amount of assets that we laid out in the first days and weeks after this guy disappeared. It seems like we knew, even then, that he was up to no good and needed to be reigned in.

It would not surprise me if the administration, whether as a plan all along or as a last minute effort to salvage this thing, has this guy testify – a la John Kerry after returning from Vietnam – that he could not stand the atrocities being committed by our soldiers over there and that he left to avoid being part of it. The Taliban tricked him and he became their prisoner. The stage is already set by the emails he was sending – talking about the cold-hearted killings by his fellow soldiers. This will give Obama the cover to pull out our “despicably behaved troops” from Afghanistan on moral grounds. It will play right into the liberal base (and all of the idiot recent college grads that actually believed their leftist professors) and enable him to discredit the returning soldiers so they can’t become politically active as conservatives or Republicans (which they heavily favor in almost every poll of military personnel).

“For those pining for an Obama Doctrine victory for the president, here it is: ‘Don’t Do Stupid Shit,’”

If that’s his doctrine, then somebody better tell Obama (maybe put it on the news, so he can find out about it when the rest of us do, like he does with everything else) — because he sure has done a lot of stupid shit in the past 5-1/2 years, and when he finds out, he’ll be mad as hell that he’s been conducting his own foreign policy in a way that is directly contrary to the Obama Doctrine.

Various ḥadīth explicitly mention that the basmala blesses every action that begins with it and confounds and angers Satan; that it should be mentioned before entering a mosque or house, before eating or drinking, before hunting or sacrificing an animal, before traveling or engaging in battle, before reciting Qurʾān, praying or performing ablutions, and even before intercourse – in fact, it should be said before performing any permissible act; its accidental absence causes about a lack of blessings, and intentionally avoiding it makes sacrificial meat unlawful and, according to some, nullifies ablution.

Watch Obama smile as soon as Bergdahl gives the most famous Muslim expression, the “Bismillah” or the “Basmallah”:

Watch the video at the link.

TarheelBen on June 2, 2014 at 6:48 PM

What did people expect when they elected as president a man who boasted about having a Muslim family, of being raised by a Muslim stepfather, and of thinking that the Muslim call to prayer is the most beautiful sound in the world?

I wonder if any of those Americans who fell/jumped from the Twin Towers would feel that way about it? Or any of the Americans on the planes that flew into those towers and/or the Pentagon and/or the Pennsylvania field — people who likely heard terrorists screaming allahu ackbar! as the last sounds they heard before they died — would agree?

Senior administration officials cautioned that the discussions over the prisoner swap, which were secretly restarted last fall after collapsing several months earlier, did not necessarily presage the resumption of the broader, on-again-off-again peace talks to end the 13-year war.

“This is the only issue we’ve discussed with the Taliban in recent months,” said one senior Obama administration official involved in the talks. “We do hope that having succeeded in this narrow but important step, it will create the possibility of expanding the dialogue to other issues. But we don’t have any promises to that effect.”

Prophetic words from the now-deceased Rolling Stones reporter Michael Hastings in his 2012 article, “America’s Last Prisoner-of-war.”
This was written in June, 2012.

“Bowe is the one prisoner the Taliban have to trade. “It could be a huge win if Obama could bring him home,” says a senior administration official familiar with the negotiations. “Especially in an election year, if it’s handled properly.”

No one can be that bloody incompetent, yet have something that has to be a plan based around ‘fundamental change’ of a ‘racist, unjust, unfair’ country that is the ‘source of the world’s economic, climatic, and diplomatic injustices and problems, work so successfully to fundamentally damage and change the country.

It’s not happening by accident.

It’s happening by design – an alliance of evil involving totalitarian’s within this country and our external enemies who detest traditional American values and all they stand for. And this alliance of evil is also an alliance of convenience, because the naive, feckless, progressive-fascist idiotarians of this country think that they can appease / assist our external enemies so that they can enact their progressive-fascist utopia in peace. They fail to learn from history that feeding the croc and hoping he’ll eat you last isn’t a real viable strategery.

As to this idea that someone “forgets English” … I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so unbelievably stupid – which is no mean feat, these days.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on June 2, 2014 at 6:39 PM

Yes, one dumbazz commentator likened it to not using your arm muscles to not speaking English as the reason he “forgot”. As if speaking whatever language the filthy goat lovers speak uses a different “muscle”. the left will be hilarious to watch.

VegasRick on June 2, 2014 at 6:45 PM

Lool :) dumbest thing I have ever read :) I can assure you no one forgets their native language because they don’t speak it on a daily basis :)..not in 2,5, 10 or 20 years… exception would be extreme circumstances/accidents/brain injuries that cause amnesia, etc…

There’s a Pentagon file that may or may not accuse this guy of outright treason and not only does Obama still do the deal for five Taliban bigwigs, he holds a big White House presser with Bergdahl’s father? What?

The Obama Doctrine: “In yo face, Murca… I’m setting my brothers free. I tried to get them to take over Egypt but the Egyptians wouldn’t go along with my Muslim Brotherhood Brethren and chose the Military. Oh, and my little tickle fest with Assad? In yo face, suckah’s – that was a well orchestrated plan to move Assad’s weapons into Iran. I’ve decimated your military, fired your generals, am actively working to reverse the 2nd Amendment rights of Veterans and I’ve killed a ton of them. You ain’t seen nothing yet”.

I believe that Bergdahl also deserves sympathy, but he has much to answer for, some of which is far more damning than simply having walked off. Many have suffered because of his actions: his fellow soldiers, their families, his family, the Afghan military, the unaffiliated Afghan civilians in Paktika, and none of this suffering was inevitable. None of it had to happen. Therefore, while I’m pleased that he’s safe, I believe there is an explanation due. Reprimanding him might yield horrible press for the Army, making our longest war even less popular than it is today. Retrieving him at least reminds soldiers that we will never abandon them to their fates, right or wrong. In light of the propaganda value, I do not expect the Department of Defense to punish Bergdahl.

He’s lucky to have survived. I once saw an insurgent cellphone video of an Afghan National Police enlistee. They had young boys hold him down, boys between the ages of 10 and 15, all of whom giggled like they were jumping on a trampoline. The prisoner screamed and pleaded for his life. The captors cut this poor man’s head off. That’s what the Taliban and their allies do to their captives who don’t have the bargaining value of an American soldier. That’s what they do to their fellow Afghans on a regular basis. No human being deserves that treatment, or to face the threat of that treatment every day for nearly five years.

But that certainly doesn’t make Bergdahl a hero, and that doesn’t mean that the soldiers he left behind have an obligation to forgive him.

I really want to know whose the evil manipulator behind Obama. He’s smooth but not smart enough to do much of anything but be a front man. The con artist. Who are the so-called brains.

Vince on June 2, 2014 at 7:23 PM

There are plenty of uber-progressives in his administration that drive this stuff. The latest to join the fray, however, is John Podesta – a truly scary individual who believes that the moral positions of progressives trumps almost any law, especially since any law which interferes with such moral positions must be patriarchal, racist, sexist, etc. in its basis and therefore can be ignored. Between him and Valerie Jarret, whose been with Obama since the beginning, that is enough to think up this insanity. However, there are unfortunately far, far more than just these two.

I think things re going to get to the point where the handlers will have to get rid of Obama. The scandals are piling up and ruining the chances of Dems who are running. Can’t wait to see how they do it. I wonder if he’s smart enough to have made a plan to protect his rear.